29. Participatory Methods for Identifying Stakeholder Perspectives on Urban Landscape Quality

This chapter discusses an approach to assist participatory governance for the sustainability of urban landscapes. Its scope and focus are on the first stages of the policy process, which concentrate on the problem characterization and policy objectives (Turnpenny et al. 2015). Hence, the focus of this chapter is on a family of participatory methods that help citizens and other stakeholders, including policymakers and experts, to articulate and understand the different views on issues concerning urban landscape quality. Section “Articulating Different Perspectives on Urban Landscape Quality” introduces a theoretical framework, which explains why participation is needed for urban sustainability governance. Section “An Example: Repertory Grid Technique” explores the challenges for articulating and understanding different perspectives on urban landscape quality and presents the repertory grid technique as an example of a proper method. Section “Discussion and Conclusions” summarizes this chapter’s main argument and discusses the implications thereof for the overall purpose of this book, a decision-support system for quality of life issues in urban landscapes.